Post by Supergirl on Sept 24, 2015 20:25:45 GMT -5
"Third Eye Blind"
“This is impossible.” Muttered Barbara Gordon, yellow boots lined at the ledge and looking down a very steep escape into death on the sidewalk of Gotham’s dark streets. The building was tall, beyond tall, and it was nearly impossible to fathom just how many stories it truly was just as much as it was impossible that she was atop it inexplicably and that there was no way to discern which building this was. It was most certainly Gotham, but that was impossible as well because she knew ever building in Gotham and this one didn’t belong. More so, the cityscape was strange, the surrounding buildings were out of distance and displaced from the one she was on. Too far away, and darkened severely as though in a memory where your mind can’t recall the details so it just sketches something vague. And they didn’t match any set of buildings in Gotham, yet she was so very sure they were most certainly in Gotham. It smelled like Gotham, oily and slightly foul, the cold air felt like Gotham, a frosty bite, and the sounds of Gotham were just the same. However, the traffic below was scant and there were no people to be seen but she was too far up anyway to capture their attention with more than a splat on the sidewalk.
“Impossible is for fairy tales and non-believers.”
Her entire body went rigid and she spun, though carefully on the ledge, to face the owner of the voice. Though, there was never mistaking this man’s tone or speech pattern. The Joker stood, hands clasped behind his back, feet split apart and the tails of his purple jacket swaying with the high altitude’s breeze. Barbara took a step down from the ledge but kept her other foot on it for the idea to push off for a boost if needed. It was then that it occurred to her that her cowl was gone from her face leaving her skin to the cold bite of the air and her hair to whip with the wind. She couldn’t feel it resting on the back of her neck which told her it had been removed from her attire prior to her arrival here. Which didn’t quite matter since the Joker had known her identity for a long while before now.
“What is it you’re after tonight, Joker?”
His answering smile was full of promise and excitement but he said nothing as he took a step to the side on the concrete roof top and gestured to the other side of the building. For a long moment, Barbara stared at him, her mind working on hard lines to collect a memory list of every roof in Gotham with a concrete slab atop as another few strands of her mind were working on paths of action to take. Joker waggled his elongated brows at her and she narrowed her own in reply before stepping away from the ledge and carefully passing by him, far out of reach, her guard completely up as she crossed the roof and then nearing the far ledge of the undecided building. With every step she felt like her heart was trying to decide between speeding up the pace or slowing to a near crawl. The smallest of rubble on the pavement crackled under her careful boot steps, the only side next to the high winds. The closer she got the more she wanted to slow, yet she knew the green eyes of the crazed psychopath behind her were watching carefully.
She neared the ledge and took a step with one foot and leaning over her knee, her gaze gaining vision of the roof at her feet, then the ledge, then the slow view of the long drop below. Level after level of dark windows of the building leading down to the grey sidewalk so far below before the intent of her gazing was apparent. Bodies in a small pile and strewn along side one another all having faced the same fate- a dreadful drop from the ledge of this same building. She could see the blood splattered on the concrete below from the victims and the pattern matched the fate from what she could see, it wasn’t a staged scene to her knowledge. There were six bodies that she could see but it was hard to make out a lot from this height, however- four males and two females, that much she was sure. It was the colors in which the bodies were clad that she began to take in as her heart decided the rate at which it would turn. One female in black and purple with a flick of blond hair, the other completely covered in black.
Barbara dropped and grasped the ledge with both hands and let out a gasp. Cassandra Cain. Stephanie Brown. And as much as she didn’t want to, her eyes took on the male forms. Damian, his dark hair and the Robin’s cape, his form smaller next to that of Tim Drake’s. Jason Todd lay with his hood a few feet from his head and atop him….Barbara let out a noise from the back of her throat that she couldn’t identify.
“Dick Grayson.” Joker stood nearly within reach, knee up on the ledge and his hand cupping his chin as its elbow rested on his knee. “You’ve always been rather fond of that one.”
She stood back from the ledge, backing away a couple of steps. “I don’t believe it. Bodies can be staged and those costumes can be made over and over. At this height, you could dress a chimp in a suit and throw him and I couldn’t discern much.”
“You want a closer look?” His twisted smile was full of more knowledge and excitement than before, always a game he knew when you didn’t even know you were playing. “Pick one, I’ll have them brought up.” But Barbara wouldn’t answer, maybe she couldn’t? He raised a finger and nodded, “I think I know your answer.”
After a few moments, a small humming sounded and the body of the supposed Nightwing was lifted up by small motorized propellers. They lifted him over the ledge and between she and Joker before lowering him to the concrete and releasing, flying back off the building and into the dark sky. Barbara glanced up at the Joker and he grinned, backing away and gesturing toward the body as if it were all hers. She dropped to her knees and grasped the wide shoulders, the blue streaks spread down his arms in contrast to his dark suit. Barbara turned him onto his back and his head rolled with the movement.
His eyes were frozen and half-open, their normally bright blue depths were dulled and forlorn as they gazed into a void. The blood was shot toward those blue eyes and the right side of his face was disfigured as the crushing blow of the pavement had shattered his skull on that side. Blood was dried from his nose and mouth and in thick clobs of his dark hair where it had pooled on the sidewalk. Her hands roamed over his body, broken clavicle, broken ribs, a chipped sternum- he was a mess from the impact but there wasn’t a doubt. No matter of Joker’s tampering could fool Barbara Gordon from the body of Dick Grayson. She knew him too intimately for too long, his acrobatic form, his lean legs and the subtle scars from the years of fighting the criminals of Gotham. And those eyes, even dead and longing and dreaded….those were his eyes.
She shrieked, the sound something like a dying animal and full of heartbreak that couldn’t be measured. Her arms wrapped around him and hauled him onto her lap as the hot tears flooded her flushed cheeks. They were a distinct difference from the cold wind that bit at her skin and it was all the more real a difference to the cold, dead flesh of Dick Grayson in her arms.
“NO!” she gasped between sobs and rocked back and forth, clutching his stiff body to her. Rigor mortis had set in, he was hard and cold and it felt like he was filled with lead. “No, no, no.” chanting, she thumbed his unbroken cheek down to the hard lines of his once-perfect jaw. The Greek statuesque face had been so perfect, so definite in the night. She’d recognize it from any distance on her monitors as she watched Gotham. Her lips pressed to his crooked nose and she stroked his dark hair, the side that wasn’t matted with dried blood. “Just smirk, one more time, give me your stupid smirk you bastard.” But his face was frozen and wouldn’t comply. Barbara cried harder, gripping him hard enough to bruise had the capillaries under his skin not already been broken down. “Tell me a joke. Make fun of my hair. Anything, just give me anything.” But he was silent and unfocused in his gaze. She screamed again and brought him into a hug as she rocked harder on the concrete, her red hair sweeping over him as she sobbed. “Please! Please, I’m sorry for ever yelling at you, I love your jokes, I do. You can make fun of me all you want. I’ll let you order the nasty pizza you always like. I’ll stop asking for Chinese. I swear I won’t make you watch my stupid shows. I’ll let you have the last word. Whatever you want. Please, just please.”
Joker was circling her like a buzzard, slowing to lower near her and tip his head. “After death is always a clearer picture to things. It’s easier to forget the things that made you angry and it’s easy to remember the good.” His head tipped the other way. “If it helps at all, he didn’t beg. Not like the other one. He whispered something before he jumped to join your family down below.”
His gloved hand slipped into his jacket and pulled out a small box, a recorder it seemed and when he hit the button, the recorded whip of the high winds sounded for a few seconds before she heard the voice of Richard Grayson. “. . .I love you, Barbara.” The next sound was that of his boots leaving the paved ledge.
Barbara looked down at his lips, hoping they’d move to form the words, just one more time. Just once. When they wouldn’t move, she found her body shaking, hands clutching him so hard they were shaking his stiff form. Her teeth were clenched so tight that her jaw burned and she could hear her pulse blasting in her ears making sounds like angry waves crashing. In a flash, she’d left Grayson’s body and launched herself at the clown. But he hadn’t tried to dodge or move, as a matter of fact, he’d opened his arms and waited for the collision.
The redhead slammed him into the ground and didn’t hesitate to begin the barrage of flying fists to his stupid, painted face. Each hit landed and sent his snapping to one side then the other. She could feel the cartilage crushing under her blows, his nose twisting and growing further disfigured with every hit. Blood splattered and soon became decent hot streams that ribboned out onto the pavement like splattered paint. Her gloves were on and it disconnected her from the pain of feeling what she was causing. She stripped her hands of them and continued, her hands feeling the brunt force of every blow, her skin peeling away from her knuckles and cracking as they bled. Her bones cracked but didn’t break, feeling the human reaction of one body crushing into another so violently.
When she slowed her blows and found herself panting, tears hot down her face as her cheeks and nose went numb from the cold- she found the Joker still alive and conscious. He coughed, sputtering out blood to clear his throat before his wheezy laugh started wet from his throat. His laughter continued as she gathered her breath, chest heaving with each breath. “You think…the others didn’t…do the same?” His coughing broke his laughter before he continued. “You little bats and robins are all the same. First you don’t believe, then you feel grief, and then your anger. You know how many beatings I’ve gotten!”
She wrapped her cracked and bloody hands around his throat, “I find it hard to believe that two of them didn’t go all the way to kill you.”
He smiled, “Cassandra Cain. Jason Todd. That’s who you’re betting on, right?”
He knew their names, knew their identities. How had he found out? What more did he know? He’d known hers for a long while this was true but the others? Joker always had some sort of long plan, a game he was working on unless he was that bored. But what was it? All she could come up with was that he was after the ultimate, kill the bat family and provide them to Batman on a platter. One dead Robin wasn’t enough anymore apparently, one disfigured Batgirl. No, he wanted them all.
“What’s your bet he’ll do the same?” Joker asked as she fumbled in her mind. “Think he’ll keep from losing that temper of his? Think he’ll…bloody his fists so personally like you? Or do you think he’ll really keep to his code and lock me up?”
Her hands squeezed around his throat, thumbs pressing into his trachea, “I won’t give him the chance.”
…(To Be Continued)…
“This is impossible.” Muttered Barbara Gordon, yellow boots lined at the ledge and looking down a very steep escape into death on the sidewalk of Gotham’s dark streets. The building was tall, beyond tall, and it was nearly impossible to fathom just how many stories it truly was just as much as it was impossible that she was atop it inexplicably and that there was no way to discern which building this was. It was most certainly Gotham, but that was impossible as well because she knew ever building in Gotham and this one didn’t belong. More so, the cityscape was strange, the surrounding buildings were out of distance and displaced from the one she was on. Too far away, and darkened severely as though in a memory where your mind can’t recall the details so it just sketches something vague. And they didn’t match any set of buildings in Gotham, yet she was so very sure they were most certainly in Gotham. It smelled like Gotham, oily and slightly foul, the cold air felt like Gotham, a frosty bite, and the sounds of Gotham were just the same. However, the traffic below was scant and there were no people to be seen but she was too far up anyway to capture their attention with more than a splat on the sidewalk.
“Impossible is for fairy tales and non-believers.”
Her entire body went rigid and she spun, though carefully on the ledge, to face the owner of the voice. Though, there was never mistaking this man’s tone or speech pattern. The Joker stood, hands clasped behind his back, feet split apart and the tails of his purple jacket swaying with the high altitude’s breeze. Barbara took a step down from the ledge but kept her other foot on it for the idea to push off for a boost if needed. It was then that it occurred to her that her cowl was gone from her face leaving her skin to the cold bite of the air and her hair to whip with the wind. She couldn’t feel it resting on the back of her neck which told her it had been removed from her attire prior to her arrival here. Which didn’t quite matter since the Joker had known her identity for a long while before now.
“What is it you’re after tonight, Joker?”
His answering smile was full of promise and excitement but he said nothing as he took a step to the side on the concrete roof top and gestured to the other side of the building. For a long moment, Barbara stared at him, her mind working on hard lines to collect a memory list of every roof in Gotham with a concrete slab atop as another few strands of her mind were working on paths of action to take. Joker waggled his elongated brows at her and she narrowed her own in reply before stepping away from the ledge and carefully passing by him, far out of reach, her guard completely up as she crossed the roof and then nearing the far ledge of the undecided building. With every step she felt like her heart was trying to decide between speeding up the pace or slowing to a near crawl. The smallest of rubble on the pavement crackled under her careful boot steps, the only side next to the high winds. The closer she got the more she wanted to slow, yet she knew the green eyes of the crazed psychopath behind her were watching carefully.
She neared the ledge and took a step with one foot and leaning over her knee, her gaze gaining vision of the roof at her feet, then the ledge, then the slow view of the long drop below. Level after level of dark windows of the building leading down to the grey sidewalk so far below before the intent of her gazing was apparent. Bodies in a small pile and strewn along side one another all having faced the same fate- a dreadful drop from the ledge of this same building. She could see the blood splattered on the concrete below from the victims and the pattern matched the fate from what she could see, it wasn’t a staged scene to her knowledge. There were six bodies that she could see but it was hard to make out a lot from this height, however- four males and two females, that much she was sure. It was the colors in which the bodies were clad that she began to take in as her heart decided the rate at which it would turn. One female in black and purple with a flick of blond hair, the other completely covered in black.
Barbara dropped and grasped the ledge with both hands and let out a gasp. Cassandra Cain. Stephanie Brown. And as much as she didn’t want to, her eyes took on the male forms. Damian, his dark hair and the Robin’s cape, his form smaller next to that of Tim Drake’s. Jason Todd lay with his hood a few feet from his head and atop him….Barbara let out a noise from the back of her throat that she couldn’t identify.
“Dick Grayson.” Joker stood nearly within reach, knee up on the ledge and his hand cupping his chin as its elbow rested on his knee. “You’ve always been rather fond of that one.”
She stood back from the ledge, backing away a couple of steps. “I don’t believe it. Bodies can be staged and those costumes can be made over and over. At this height, you could dress a chimp in a suit and throw him and I couldn’t discern much.”
“You want a closer look?” His twisted smile was full of more knowledge and excitement than before, always a game he knew when you didn’t even know you were playing. “Pick one, I’ll have them brought up.” But Barbara wouldn’t answer, maybe she couldn’t? He raised a finger and nodded, “I think I know your answer.”
After a few moments, a small humming sounded and the body of the supposed Nightwing was lifted up by small motorized propellers. They lifted him over the ledge and between she and Joker before lowering him to the concrete and releasing, flying back off the building and into the dark sky. Barbara glanced up at the Joker and he grinned, backing away and gesturing toward the body as if it were all hers. She dropped to her knees and grasped the wide shoulders, the blue streaks spread down his arms in contrast to his dark suit. Barbara turned him onto his back and his head rolled with the movement.
His eyes were frozen and half-open, their normally bright blue depths were dulled and forlorn as they gazed into a void. The blood was shot toward those blue eyes and the right side of his face was disfigured as the crushing blow of the pavement had shattered his skull on that side. Blood was dried from his nose and mouth and in thick clobs of his dark hair where it had pooled on the sidewalk. Her hands roamed over his body, broken clavicle, broken ribs, a chipped sternum- he was a mess from the impact but there wasn’t a doubt. No matter of Joker’s tampering could fool Barbara Gordon from the body of Dick Grayson. She knew him too intimately for too long, his acrobatic form, his lean legs and the subtle scars from the years of fighting the criminals of Gotham. And those eyes, even dead and longing and dreaded….those were his eyes.
She shrieked, the sound something like a dying animal and full of heartbreak that couldn’t be measured. Her arms wrapped around him and hauled him onto her lap as the hot tears flooded her flushed cheeks. They were a distinct difference from the cold wind that bit at her skin and it was all the more real a difference to the cold, dead flesh of Dick Grayson in her arms.
“NO!” she gasped between sobs and rocked back and forth, clutching his stiff body to her. Rigor mortis had set in, he was hard and cold and it felt like he was filled with lead. “No, no, no.” chanting, she thumbed his unbroken cheek down to the hard lines of his once-perfect jaw. The Greek statuesque face had been so perfect, so definite in the night. She’d recognize it from any distance on her monitors as she watched Gotham. Her lips pressed to his crooked nose and she stroked his dark hair, the side that wasn’t matted with dried blood. “Just smirk, one more time, give me your stupid smirk you bastard.” But his face was frozen and wouldn’t comply. Barbara cried harder, gripping him hard enough to bruise had the capillaries under his skin not already been broken down. “Tell me a joke. Make fun of my hair. Anything, just give me anything.” But he was silent and unfocused in his gaze. She screamed again and brought him into a hug as she rocked harder on the concrete, her red hair sweeping over him as she sobbed. “Please! Please, I’m sorry for ever yelling at you, I love your jokes, I do. You can make fun of me all you want. I’ll let you order the nasty pizza you always like. I’ll stop asking for Chinese. I swear I won’t make you watch my stupid shows. I’ll let you have the last word. Whatever you want. Please, just please.”
Joker was circling her like a buzzard, slowing to lower near her and tip his head. “After death is always a clearer picture to things. It’s easier to forget the things that made you angry and it’s easy to remember the good.” His head tipped the other way. “If it helps at all, he didn’t beg. Not like the other one. He whispered something before he jumped to join your family down below.”
His gloved hand slipped into his jacket and pulled out a small box, a recorder it seemed and when he hit the button, the recorded whip of the high winds sounded for a few seconds before she heard the voice of Richard Grayson. “. . .I love you, Barbara.” The next sound was that of his boots leaving the paved ledge.
Barbara looked down at his lips, hoping they’d move to form the words, just one more time. Just once. When they wouldn’t move, she found her body shaking, hands clutching him so hard they were shaking his stiff form. Her teeth were clenched so tight that her jaw burned and she could hear her pulse blasting in her ears making sounds like angry waves crashing. In a flash, she’d left Grayson’s body and launched herself at the clown. But he hadn’t tried to dodge or move, as a matter of fact, he’d opened his arms and waited for the collision.
The redhead slammed him into the ground and didn’t hesitate to begin the barrage of flying fists to his stupid, painted face. Each hit landed and sent his snapping to one side then the other. She could feel the cartilage crushing under her blows, his nose twisting and growing further disfigured with every hit. Blood splattered and soon became decent hot streams that ribboned out onto the pavement like splattered paint. Her gloves were on and it disconnected her from the pain of feeling what she was causing. She stripped her hands of them and continued, her hands feeling the brunt force of every blow, her skin peeling away from her knuckles and cracking as they bled. Her bones cracked but didn’t break, feeling the human reaction of one body crushing into another so violently.
When she slowed her blows and found herself panting, tears hot down her face as her cheeks and nose went numb from the cold- she found the Joker still alive and conscious. He coughed, sputtering out blood to clear his throat before his wheezy laugh started wet from his throat. His laughter continued as she gathered her breath, chest heaving with each breath. “You think…the others didn’t…do the same?” His coughing broke his laughter before he continued. “You little bats and robins are all the same. First you don’t believe, then you feel grief, and then your anger. You know how many beatings I’ve gotten!”
She wrapped her cracked and bloody hands around his throat, “I find it hard to believe that two of them didn’t go all the way to kill you.”
He smiled, “Cassandra Cain. Jason Todd. That’s who you’re betting on, right?”
He knew their names, knew their identities. How had he found out? What more did he know? He’d known hers for a long while this was true but the others? Joker always had some sort of long plan, a game he was working on unless he was that bored. But what was it? All she could come up with was that he was after the ultimate, kill the bat family and provide them to Batman on a platter. One dead Robin wasn’t enough anymore apparently, one disfigured Batgirl. No, he wanted them all.
“What’s your bet he’ll do the same?” Joker asked as she fumbled in her mind. “Think he’ll keep from losing that temper of his? Think he’ll…bloody his fists so personally like you? Or do you think he’ll really keep to his code and lock me up?”
Her hands squeezed around his throat, thumbs pressing into his trachea, “I won’t give him the chance.”
…(To Be Continued)…
